Monday, June 24, 2013

Before we carry on, special plug for this Ana Mardoll post, in which she reviews Man of Steel. I feel it’s topical, since she discusses just how much women’s reproductive choices are being manipulated, and how they are being tampered with right now.

Does it seem odd to you that I would read a critical review of a movie that involves looking at women’s reproductive rights just as I am critically deconstructing a book that deals with the same topic? It could be a coincidence.

Or it could be that we have a problem, and writers and critics are trying to tackle the topic - the first by writing about it, the latter picking it out and displaying it for what it looks like.

Anyway, back to Bumped: after the twins broke up at the mall and had conversations on the same topic - sex for the fun of it - we open the second part with a quote by Melody’s own parents:

Thursday, June 13, 2013

I’m white. Being white means I have a certain level of
privilege that people of colour are not afforded. I’ve never had to experience
racism, I’ve never been slurred based on the colour of my skin and I don’t have
to live with the extreme social and economic gap that people of colour do in
terms of employment, higher education, sexual assault, health issues, etc.
Sometimes when I’m looking at an issue, it can be very easy for me to look over
the experiences of others. This isn’t deliberate but it is a sign that my race
has levelled the playing field in a way that just isn’t open for people who
aren’t white. I make a conscious effort to see the bigger picture, take into
account the experiences of others and to check my privilege at every possible
turn. Frankly, every white person should do so.

I say all this now because I think it’s important for me to
put this disclaimer before my piece, wherein I discuss what I saw as the gross
ignorance and cultural appropriation present in the book “Tiger’s Curse” by
Colleen Houck, a white American YA author. The novel, which takes place
primarily in India, centres on a young white American woman called Kelsey who,
through a series of laughable and increasingly convoluted events, finds herself
looking after a cursed Indian prince who is stuck in the body of a tiger. She
accompanies him back to his homeland in order to accomplish several tasks to
break the curse, and through this process finds out that she is the chosen one
of the Hindu goddess Durga.

Before I can even tackle the cultural issues of this book, I
have to discuss just how terrible it is on a basic storytelling level. The
book, which was originally self-published on Amazon before being picked up by a
publisher and becoming a NYT best-seller, is abysmal. There’s no other word for
it. The prose is childish and juvenile, often reading like an essay by a
fourteen year old who has just learned how to speak English. Throughout the
extremely padded story, the irritating narrator Kelsey displays the emotional
and intellectual maturity of a tween, one who is far more concerned with
describing every single meal she eats or piece of clothing she wears over the
action packed tasks she is set to accomplish. We are subjected to list after
list of every single thing Kelsey does, from her morning routine to her
showering. Any potential for excitement in the more action packed scenes is
quickly shot down because of the stilted prose. I don’t ask for much realism in
my books with cursed tiger princes but when I’m rolling my eyes on page 4 (when
Kelsey literally walks into a job centre and is given a job helping to look
after a tiger in a travelling circus despite a total lack of qualifications),
that’s not good.

Supporting characters make no impact beyond their broad
offensive stereotypes (the Italian circus owner speaks like the pizza chef from
“The Simpsons” while most of the Indian characters speak in the broken English
style reserved for racist jokes – shockingly, people in India can speak
English, many of them very well. They’re not uneducated simpletons who need a
nice white lady to fix their problems). The romance is essentially insta-love
but Kelsey is at least smart enough to acknowledge that an Indian price
deprived of female contact for hundreds of years may just latch onto the first
one he sees. Overall, I was actually embarrassed by the quality of the novel.
There is basically no villain until the cheap cliff-hanger epilogue, and the
story really could have benefited from some actual antagonism beyond “Baww, Ren
is so hot and I want to kiss him!” I was dying for the opportunity to find a
paper copy and take big red pen to it. I easily could have removed 20% of that
padding and it wouldn’t have made an ounce of difference to the story.

Of course, the real issue with this novel is the portrayal
of India and its culture, particularly its religious mythos. The moments where
facts about India are shoehorned in feel like Houck just googled random Indian
facts and copy-pasted them into the document. People recite stale facts as part
of the dialogue and it sounds as though they’re just reading from Wikipedia. I
even googled several passages to make sure they weren’t plagiarised from
websites because I just couldn’t be sure otherwise. Whenever Kelsey stays in a
hotel in India, she stays in the lap of luxury, conveniently avoiding the
poorer areas of the country and even the more middle-class areas. This is
tourism for the spoiled White Kelsey. It’s like colonialism never happened.

Then again, these moments aren’t anywhere near as offensive
as when Houck just makes stuff up. For instance, a character mentions an
Islamic belief that Allah sends tiger’s down from heaven to protect his
devotees. That’s completely untrue. No such legend exists. While Islam is one
of the main religions in India, its origins lie to the Middle East, and there
aren’t a whole lot of tigers there. My GoodReads friend Nessa covers this in
more detail, including Houck’s inability to keep the mythology of any country
straight (kappas?!). This
isn’t Hindi culture, this is Disney’s Hinduism for beginners, completely
stripped of all the complexities and less then PG rated aspects.

I really became angry when White Kelsey is declared the
chosen one of the goddess Durga. The population of India is over 1.2 billion
people, yet the chosen one of Durga is a white American girl. Even she
questions whether this is right! This brief moment of clarity only serves to
aggravate the sheer insulting nature of yet another appearance of the white
saviour. Remember in “Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom” how Indy, the
very obviously white guy, was the one the poor helpless villagers said was sent
by Shiva to save them? What about Kony 2012, a white saviour project so smug
and misinformed that it went from online sensation to public joke in about a
fortnight? Let’s not forget every single movie set in an American inner-city
high school where the nice white lady/man comes in to teach those
black/Hispanic kids how to improve their lives, then she gets down with their
urban dancing! And, of course, Bono. It is not the job of white people to swoop in on some moral
mission and save the poor unfortunate non-white souls. It’s depressing enough
that we’re still trying this shit in 2013, I don’t want to have to see it
deployed as a cheap exploitative plot device in order to make an irritating and
poorly developed Mary Sue be made even more special.

Two things came to mind while reading “Tiger’s Curse”. One
was “Temple of Doom”, since the action scenes and general narrative felt very
much like Indiana Jones fan-fiction, only without Short Round, and the other
was Selema Gomez. Lately, Gomez has been on the receiving end of a lot of
justified controversy for her repeated wearing of the bindi in her performances.
Gomez seems to be wearing the bindi for no other reason than it looks “cool”.Iggy Azalea’s latest music video “Bounce” is set during an Indian wedding for
no apparent reason, with Azalea in traditional dress. Gwen Stefani wore the
bindi in the past, as have many other white pop-stars. They took something that
wasn’t their culture, stripped it of its cultural and historical context and
made it into a fashion accessory. The Aerogram put it best here:

“The
political context in which cultural symbols exist is important. Cultural
appropriation happens — and the unquestioned sense of entitlement that white
Americans display towards the artifacts and rituals of people of color exists
too. All “appropriation” is not merely an example of cultural sharing, an
exchange between friends that takes place on a level playing field.”

“Tiger’s Curse” uses Indian
culture for no apparent reason other than it’s “cool”. The food is tasty, the
clothes are colourful, the gods and goddesses are interesting and it’s all
there for white people to cherry pick for cheap artistic purposes. Houck at
least doesn’t white-wash this version of India, although the two love interests
(yes, love triangle) are essentially blank slates who exist to push a plot
forward and fawn over the extremely irritating White Kelsey. This should be
their story and it’s not. It’s the story of the white girl. It’s yet another
tired narrative where the white people come in to save the day from those poor
locals with their non-white skin and lack of privilege. Keep in mind just how
few mainstream YA novels feature heroines of colour and then look at this book.
Why is the supposedly relatable heroine white and why is she so special to an
Indian goddess when she has absolutely no connection or understanding of said
culture besides the plot telling us she’s special? There are many reasons why
you should avoid “Tiger’s Curse”, but if you need to pick one then avoid it
because Hindi culture is not Houck’s to fetishize.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Contrary to popular belief (which I am partially responsible
for), I actually like romance novels. No, really, I do. I firmly believe that
romance is one of the trickiest genres to write well but when it’s pulled off,
it’s unbeatable. With Summer coming (it’ll come to Scotland eventually) it’s
the perfect time for me to curl up with a romance and enjoy the brief moments
of sunshine my glorious country receives. However, as much as I love romance, I’m
also notoriously picky about what I read. There are so many different types of
romances out there, with more tropes than you can shake a stick (ahem) at. A lot
of my preferences and must-avoids are pretty well known to our loyal readers
but there are a few that truly grind my gears, and I’m here to share them with
you now!

Student/teacher
relationships.

Cora Carmack’s “Losing It” has received a lot of love lately
but it’s a book I’ll never be able to read objectively because I am so
uncomfortable with the student/teacher dynamic being played for romance. For me,
the balance of power is too unequal, even if the age difference is only a few
years. When I was in high school, there were more than a few controversies due
to students and teachers being caught having affairs. There was nothing hot about
hearing stories of 16 year olds caught up in sexual encounters with the people
who graded their homework and were closer in age to their parents. It even
unnerves me if the student and teacher are both in their 20s because the
student, who in these stories is usually female, will always be less in control
than the teacher. That’s how that dynamic works. I’d rather read about a
relationship where those constraints aren’t being used to create weak dramatic tension.

Instant First Time
Hotness.

The virgin is an all too commonly used trope in romance. It always
has been. It appears a lot in YA for obvious reasons, but it’s become rather
popular in NA too. The fetishizing of sexual purity is something I’ve written
about before but one of the many other elements of virginity in romance that
bugs me is when the blushing virgin girl finally does have sex and it’s
instantly orgasmic. No pain, no discomfort, no hymen clean-up afterwards (to be
fair, not every virgin has a hymen because those things are pretty easy to break),
just instant screaming and stars in the eyes. It’s romanticised, of course, but
the sheer level of disbelief I have to impose on myself to get through reading
one of those scenes without rolling my eyes is exhausting. I would love to see
more romance novels where the couple genuinely care for each other, have a
mutual attraction, and have sex for the first time and it’s not all that. Unfortunately,
life is not that excellent. I’m also cynical about romances where the virgin
heroine hasn’t even masturbated before she meets the designated love interest. More
sex positive romances where auto-pilot is encouraged!

Billionaires.

Any book that fetishizes wealth bothers me. Money is a
really easy way to bypass a lot of necessary plotting in your book – you don’t
need to bother with your heroine having to work to pay the bills and student
debt if she’s got a guy with limitless wealth at her disposal. Money is a
hugely important part of all of our lives because that’s how capitalism works
but I don’t like it to be part of the romance in the sense that the courting
features a lot of extravagant displays of wealth. It just makes me think “Jeez,
lay it out on the table already” and wonder if I can start socialist warfare.

Controlling a-holes.

This is a pretty obvious one and I’ve covered it many times
already so won’t go into too much detail. If the heroine at any point talks
about being scared of the designated love interest or feeling intimidated by
him, the book stops being a romance for me. If he grabs her, hurts her in any
way or controls her actions, dress sense, friendships or anything else, that’s
not romance to me. Not in any way.

“Your pussy is mine!”

Come on, do I even need to explain this? One, it’s not yours
because it’s not on your body. Two, is this considered sexy talk? I tend to
cringe whenever anyone refers to female genitalia as “pussy” or some of the
more purple prose leaning euphemisms (never ever call it a “flower” unless you’re
studying Georgia O’Keefe). The slang for vagina tends to be far funnier and
more awkward than that for penis, in my experience. I’m not sure why, although
I do know a lot of stupid names for the ding-dang-doodle! On this note, I also
roll my eyes at any sex scene where the hero feels the need to describe the
feeling of one organ inserted into another. “Ooh, it’s so hot/wet/tight!” You’re
hot drilling for oil, you’re having sex so just get on with it and cut the
commentary! I’m also unnerved by sex scenes that don’t seem to understand the
difference between the vagina, vulva, clitoris and cervix. They’re not interchangeable!
This is why we need good sex education in schools.

Highlander romances.

I’m Scottish, as you all know. I’m also a Celtic studies
graduate who focused for a while on cultural representations of Scotland in
entertainment. I had to watch “Brigadoon” for class. I had to look up pictures
of Shrek in a kilt. I found surveys taken from several years ago in America
where the most famous Scot the people polled could name was Groundskeeper
Willie. I’m incredibly fussy and hyper-aware of Scottish cultural stereotypes. Sometimes
I’m okay with it, like with “Brave”, but most of the time it’s just too
embarrassing for me, and rugged Highlander romances are a big no-no for me. I just
don’t have a high enough level of cringe tolerance to read them without wincing
in pain. Having said that, I am curious about Diana Gabaldon’s work so maybe I’ll
give it a go one of these days.

There’s just a few of my no-nos. I’m really picky and have
stupidly high standards, can you tell? What are yours?

Monday, June 10, 2013

When I was in my 2nd year of high school, I moved
from reading the teen section of my school library to the adult section. The adult
section was about the quarter the size of the teen section, and jam-packed with
huge tomes with familiar names, some of which had never been checked out. I quickly
immersed myself in chunky paperbacks full of stuff that was entirely
inappropriate for a 14 year old – mainly gritty crime fiction and the Hannibal
Lecter series, but basically, I would read anything. During one English class,
we ended up doing a close reading assessment of the opening chapter of “The
Crow Road” by Scottish writer Iain Banks, the book with my all-time favourite
opening line:

“It was the day my grandmother exploded.”

How could you not love a line like that? Of course, I was
hooked and had to go read one of his books straightaway. Unfortunately, at the
time somebody had already checked out “The Crow Road” so I browsed through
Banks’s other books and was drawn to one with a simple black and white cover entitled
“The Wasp Factory”. The blurb talked about a murdering child so it was
basically right up my alley. I read the sort of books that made people worry
about me and I loved it!

I remember being completely engrossed in that book for the
couple of days it took me to read. I would rush to finish my classwork so I could
have free time to read it. One day in geography class, my teacher excitedly
asked me how I was liking the book and if I’d gotten to the end yet (I hadn’t
but even that vague warning couldn’t have prepared me for it). When I did
finish the book we ended up having a great chat about it. My class-mates didn’t
tend to read the stuff I did – probably because they didn’t want people to
think they were murderers – so having someone to talk about it with meant a lot
to me. I eventually did read “The Crow Road” and loved it but it didn’t impact
me in the same way “The Wasp Factory”, in all its disturbing, visceral and
bleakly funny way, did.

I mention this because, as you probably know, Iain Banks
died yesterday after a short battle with terminal cancer. I haven’t read a lot
of Banks’s work but sometimes all it takes is one book to make a difference. “The
Wasp Factory” shaped me in a huge way. It’s one of the defining pieces of
entertainment in my life, up there with “The History Boys”, “Harry Potter” and
the music of Rufus Wainwright. One of the reasons I wanted to study English
literature was because of that book. I desperately wanted to understand every
page as well as look into literary criticism (the fact that this book’s
critical quotes section included ones from people who loathed it just made me
smile so much). His work was the sort of stuff I wanted to write for the
longest time because to me it felt completely honest, viscerally so. I wanted
everyone to read this book so they could understand why I loved it so much.

That was almost 10 years ago but the impact it made on me
remains, and it breaks my heart to write this.

It only takes one book to change everything. So thank you,
Iain Banks, for everything you gave me.

We’re uber-happy to have the site back on and working, but it seems like a side-effect of our cross-country move was the deletion of all the comments (sad, that) and every former link is now rendered null (sadder still). So we need you guys to repopulate the threads, and if any of you have bookmarked an old post, we’re sorry you’ll have to go back and look them up. That said, any suggestions about solutions are more than welcome (directory, maybe?) so please let us know.

Last time on Bumped, we talked a little about YA dystopias and romance. Now, we get to see how this actually works.

Monday, June 3, 2013

As some of you have noticed, we’ve been having some domain issues these last few weeks. Long story (And really, Ceilidh is the one who should be telling you this), but here’s the cliff notes: our domain name expired and was snatched up quickly, so now we’re British. We have feels about it, but all I will say is “Cheers, mates” and kick nationalism in the rear (It’s a globalised age, affinity to a set of borders should be the the first thing to go.) We apologise for our domain issues, and we’ve prepared a lovely new post to get the discussion going again.

Last time on Bumped, Zen showed Melody a piece of paper which sent her into a panic.

Sunday, June 2, 2013

Dear Author,
one of our favourite sites, recently had an excellent post examining the appeal
of the now infamous 50 Shades series as well as that of self-publishing
sensation Kristen Ashley. Ashley, who is an extremely prolific writer, has
attracted a massive fanbase with her alpha male romances, the most popular of
which centre on motorcycle gangs, law enforcement and the like. Personally, I find
both Ashley and James’s work to be hilariously bad in terms of their prose
(Ashley’s devotion to the run-on sentence is a continuing source of pain) and
cringe-worthy in terms of their dynamics portrayed. I admit it: I don’t like
alpha males, I hate romanticised “claiming” of women and I absolutely loathe
abuse portrayed as love. So the appeal of these kinds of romances will forever elude
me. Call me old fashioned but the moment a man starts talking about how a woman
is “his”, I’m consumed by an overwhelming desire to run away and buy some
pepper spray.

These kinds of all-consuming romances are hardly old hat in
publishing, both adult and YA. It feels as if we spend most of our time on The
Book Lantern discussing the rape culture and romanticised abuse ever present in
modern mainstream YA and NA. The latter in particular has fallen in deep with
this trope to the point where it seems as if the entire category of New Adult
is limited to contemporary romances with a huge dollop of sexism on top. I get
that for a lot of women, this is an extremely desirable fantasy to have. That’s
one thing. The issue here is that these particular kinds of romances have saturated
the genre and category to the point where it seems as if they’re the only
option available to readers. Not only did extreme romance become the norm, it
became the expected romantic mode.

So what’s the appeal of “extreme romance” for readers of YA
and NA? First we need to look at who these readers are. The expected answer for
YA fans is, of course, teenagers, but we all know that it’s not so simple these
days. With over half of YA recent purchasers being adults, the category seems
tilted in favour of the adult audience, one with more disposable income than
the average teenager. This audience is the primary target of NA, in my opinion.
The romances in the work of Abbi Glines, S.C. Stephens and Jamie McGuire, for
example, operate in much the same way that the all-consuming passions of
Twilight and Hush Hush, only consummating the love isn’t considered heinous.

Next, we need to look at what the term “extreme romance”
suggests. Personally, I’m disappointed whenever the word “extreme” turns up and
there are no explosions involved. In this context, explosion free, “extreme
romance” conjures up images of the highly dramatic: soap opera style arguments,
passionate embraces in the rain, wall banging orgasms every time you have sex,
the overwhelming, all-consuming passionate love that you literally can’t live without.
Extreme suggests risk and danger, and isn’t all that positive sounding. However,
even I can admit to seeing the appeal in the idea of a gorgeous man who fits
the general definition of “perfect” having eyes for you and only you. Not only
does he love you wholeheartedly but his entire life is ruled by that love. It’s
not a new model of romance, it’s been around as love as love stories have been.
Why is it so popular now, particularly with the teen/new adult age group? That’s
a thesis I’m not quite ready to write.

The interesting thing about this “extreme romance” in the
context of YA is that it’s still incredibly safe and predictable for the
reader. We never doubt for one second throughout four books in the Twilight
series that Bella and Edward will end up together. Nobody is ever in any real
danger because the author is not emotionally prepared to put her characters
through that, nor is she distant enough from her own creation to have real
dangers to the relationship unfold. Dating a vampire with control issues is “safe”
for Bella, even if it’s a potential landmine of sexism and rape culture. This
can also be applied to a huge chunk of the paranormal romance canon of the past
6 or 7 years. Even in a dangerous world of mythical creatures, the
relationships are never actually at risk, no matter how many red herrings or
tired plot points are thrown in (I’m looking at you, Mortal Instruments). No amount
of desperate love triangles will threaten the designated pairing.

This extends to NA, where contemporary romances rule the
roost. Romance is grounded in its rules of safety. Happy ever after or go home.
Granted, there’s usually a lot of angst thrown in the way but the basic pattern
remains the same. The reader lives vicariously through a new and shocking tale
of romance at its highest peak of emotion with the knowledge that no matter how
much anguish one must endure, “love” will win (note the quotation marks around
love because dear god I refuse to refer to anything that happens in a Jamie
McGuire or S.C. Stephens book as love). There’s a certain appeal to the kind of
romance that relinquishes a woman of her control, leaving her able to just give
in and have someone else take care of the big issues. There may be some sparky
dialogue that “proves” how equally matched the pair are but in the end it’s
marriage and babies and love saving the day, then sex (after the wedding for
YA, before it for NA, pretty much every time).

The issue with extreme romance isn’t that it exists – your kink
is not my kink – but that it’s the sole option available right now in the
categories. The all-consuming angle somewhat fits with the rush of first love that’s
so appealing to many young women. However, there’s a huge difference between the
adrenaline of first love and the possessive nature of the “extreme romance”,
and when that’s the only thing you can see in YA and NA, that becomes a problem
because the problematic elements are normalised to the point where we dismiss
them as just par for the course. NA is currently a Formula 1 style race to the
top, with self-publishing leading the way and prolific writers churning out generic
stories as quick as they can to keep up with trends and make a bit of money, so
the category hasn’t had a chance to settle down and evolve beyond extreme
romance. Perhaps with time that will change. Now that YA has moved somewhat
beyond the sparkly bandwagon and is on the lookout for pastures fresh, we’ll
find something a little less extreme.